In yet another example of Hollywood being obsessed with Silicon Valley lately, a new film is in the works by director/screenwriter Adam McKay (The Big Short, Anchorman) telling the story of the rise and fall of Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes. At 32, Holmes has now fully ridden the wave of youthful fame, extraordinary wealth, and total disgrace and annihilation of her net worth just last week Forbes, which once pegged her worth at $4.5 billion, declared her current worth to be zero dollars following calls to suspend her blood-testing company's operations for two years and major questions about the accuracy of the pin-prick process Holmes championed.
As Deadline reports today, Jennifer Lawrence has signed on to play Holmes in a story that's likely to start around the time Holmes founded Theranos at age 19, in 2003.
Deadline writes, "In Lawrence, [McKay] may have found the perfect leading lady to embody Holmes, at one point the latest poster child for medical innovation and potential profitability." And we already know she can rock a black turtleneck!
And as TechCrunch puts it, "It might seem too soon for Theranos to get some Hollywood screen time, but movies have been made out of much less before."
The SF Business Times reminds us that Holmes's spiral into Valley infamy began last October, when the FDA released a report "detailing 14 problems, or 'observations,' it saw during inspections [at Theranos] conducted last August through mid-September." Since then the company has also come under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as being served with several consumer lawsuits.
It's unclear when this "rise-and-fall cautionary tale" might start shooting, but this is sounding like a potential 2017 release.
